. . . two members of the Asymmetric Warfare Group. They will recover weapons, night vision & other sensitive gear - and await U.S. ground forces

Half of the nose gear that was sheared off at landing.

Other half of the nose gear - this "landing" was beyond engineering limits

Ladder To flight deck in left of frame. Deck is pushed up in the center & split down the middle. The landing was rough.

Close-up of split in the deck. Dust filled the cabin through this split, filled the ship, making it hard to breath or see until emergency exits were opened within a minute of landing.

Wider view of the interior damage - a miracle that anyone survived.

Landing gear forced up into fuselage with doors torn off

Port side emergency exit hatch near flight deck.

Iraqi Police with U.S. advisers were first on the scene. They unloaded for the C-130 crew.

Stryker Infantry Company from U.S. 25th Infantry Division arrives to secure the site.

Preparations are made for transport of personnel, weapons, sensitive items and equipment back to Baghdad.

A Fort Bragg & Pope Air Force Base Aircraft From Which Unit Commander, Colonel Michael Ceroli and his men probably jumped by parachute in training. Never Again will they jump Tail # 60412 - this Hercules is a complete loss.

14 comments:

I was at Camp Liberty when that happened. It wasn't really 10 clicks north of Baghdad, more like 10 clicks north of the RUNWAY at BIAP, so the pictures are a little misleading - it was pretty close to urban areas. Never heard an official explanation, but the rumor was something along the lines of "uncommanded power loss after takeoff"... to which we all said "Well, no shit - I hope it wasn't a COMMANDED power loss." All the folks in the back walked away and I think they were on another flight out that night, if I recall.

Looks like they landed at too-high of a sink (descent) rate for whatever reason. Those are not nose landing gear on the ground by themselves, those are the left main landing gear struts and tire/wheel assemblies. Nose is a dual-wheel assembly. Centerline keel split the floor of the plane when it hit the ground.Ran out of airspeed, ideas and altitude at the same time. Thank the deity of your choice that they all survived the landing. Amazing that they all got out in one piece.

The landing gear that are sheared off in your pictures are both main landing gear, the one with the strut on top clearly shows the brake inside the wheel. The nose gear consists of a piston with two axles all one peice. Great pictures

For someone who knows a bit more about this incident, the crew of the C-130 was Active Duty, flying this AF Reserve aircraft. The crew had something like 30-60 hours stick time on this model, and then they were deployed. But, like most things in the Air Force, the crew was all given medals. I'm sure THAT covered up something.

I've read the accident report. The OAT was 40°C (104°F). just after take off, at 300'AGL the defensive systems alerted the crew of missle launch. The AC put the aircraft in a dive away from the threat and retarded the throttles toward flight idle and then back to max power within less than a half second. All 4 engines basically flamed out with the rapid throttle movement back to max power. When the RPM dropped below 65% they tried to light back off. #1,2,& 4 engines stalled trying to come back on speed. #3 was the only one that came back up on speed. By that time there was no way the aircraft could continue to fly. The crew tried to get the gear down before bellying in. At that OAT and rapid throttle movement, they ran out of airspeed and altitude. On the throttle quadrant it states, "Movement shall not be made in less than one second".

I like all of the comments...I know for sure that it was a mechanical issue. Might want to re-read the mishap report. No cover up at all. BTW they all had plenty of time behind the stick not the time quoted above...all a bunch of urban myths….. and uninformed opinions.

If anyone reads this in the future, the fact is the crew was a relatively inexperienced crew and the pilot did slap the throttles back to idle faster than the manual states. That it was mechanical is a cover-up. After takeoff in a combat environment you don't have the synchrophaser switch on either engine. The crew did it to themselves so you can take your urban legend, legend elsewhere. Sincerely, a Herk engineer

I was on this flight. I'll never forget when shortly after we took off, hearing the engines go completely silent. You could have heard a pin drop. Once we stopped, we quickly got our gear, got off, they did a quick count, and we set up a quick perimiter. It was maybe 5 minutes later when a group of helicopters showed up to get us out of there. After getting to the TMC, they had us write out statements, gave us a heads up on what to expect in the next few days and released us. As we were leaving, we stopped to thank the pilot and his crew. My group ( I was there with four others on a visit to Cropper) got on a flight hours later. Scary stuff all around, but thankfully we were all ok.